Vinyl Reissues for Four Recordings

A listing of upcoming records at the Jungle Records record store in Denmark holds a surprise. Four U2 releases are listed for release in April. All four releases are listed for April 6, 2018. The listings are:

Pop (Reissue) 2LP

All That You Can’t Leave Behind (Reissue)

Wide Awake in America (Reissue) EP

Best of 1980 – 1990 (Reissue) 2LP

The prices of these are listed as 30.84 Euro / 37.80 USD (Pop and The Best Of), 24.14 Euro / 29.58 USD (All That You Can’t Leave Behind) and 16.09 Euro / 19.72 USD (Wide Awake in America). These prices are from the Jungle Records listing and pricing could vary at other shops. The online shop, Record Pusher lists a few additional details. Pop will be on double 180 Gram Vinyl and released on April 13, 2018. All That You Can’t Leave Behind will be a single 180 Gram Vinyl and will be released on April 13, 2018. The Record Pusher site lists that The Best of 1980 – 1990 will be a double 180 Gram Vinyl, but that the release will not come out until July 27, 2018. Record Pusher does not list a new listing for Wide Awake in America at this time.

Last March we were able to tell you about a plan to reissue U2’s albums on vinyl. At that time two releases were released on vinyl, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and a new version of War. Last summer a new version of The Joshua Tree was also issued on vinyl as well as other formats. This release of The Joshua Tree and later Songs of Experience caused the reissues of other albums to be put on hold.

Vinyl has grown to be a big industry in recent years, and is one format of music where there is growth in sales year after year. Universal has been pressing U2 vinyl over the last few years to meet the growing demand for this format. These new releases would join Boy, October, War, Under a Blood Red Sky, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, U218 Singles, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience as albums being kept in print by Universal Music at this time.

This represents the entire U2 catalog with the exception of No Line on the Horizon, The Best of 1990 – 2000, Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Original Soundtracks 1. (Achtung Baby was available in 2011 as part of the re-issue campaign but has become difficult to find.) The Best of 1990 – 2000 is also not currently in print in a vinyl format.

Originally when we spoke with Universal last year we were told that the next albums to follow would be All That You Leave Behind and Pop. We were told at the time that these would start to appear last summer but the campaign surrounding the 30th anniversary campaign for The Joshua Tree delayed plans for these. At this time we have not been able to confirm these four reissued albums with Universal directly but we hope to do so this week.

Many of these albums have been out of print for a number of years, making them popular on the collector market. However this has also meant that bootleg copies of these albums have been pressed and sold in recent years. Both Pop and All That You Can’t Leave Behind have been pressed in low quality picture disc formats. These pressings are not legitimate pressings by Universal and have not been authorized by U2 or by Universal Records. While the picture disc pressings make these bootlegs easy to identify there are also reports of bootlegged versions of these albums on black vinyl, which are far more difficult to distinguish from the original. We urge caution if ordering these new pressings on vinyl, as some secondary sellers using Amazon do appear to have the bootleg versions listed for sale.

If these four are coming, it is likely that Universal is using The Best of 1980 – 1990 and Wide Awake in America to test the market for further releases of the non-album back catalog.

Many thanks to Edgar / nahuise for the initial information on these releases.